Twitter is for over consumeristic Americans...

About 2 weeks ago I blogged about the ever changing platform twitter has become form it's early days of a "day in the life of nobody" to now being used by political activists and gaining credibility as a source of news and sharing information. Although we seem to share the same sentiments, Morozov (2011) seems to then become very anti-American in his stance on twitter and how responsible it is in helping grass roots movements.

As stated during the tutorial twitter and Facebook are used as organisation tools that help to organise real world movements that in turn create change. There is no use having a completely online movement as the government don't seem to take notice. Morozov himself says 'the internet can be effective tool for political change when used by grassroots organisations' (2011, p1). However he then goes on to discredit places such as twitter and Facebook saying it is all about the peoples motives and rive and not the technology, which is where is argument is lost.

Bringing in Gladwell who follows his train of thought in his article Twitter, You're No Martin Luther King, claims that revolutions tend to be overlooked by the tools the activists use such as 'the role of the telegraph in the 1917 Bolshevik revolution...tape-recorder in the 1979 Iranian Revolution (highly recommend further research, it is fascinating) and fax machine in the 1989 revolutions' (Morozov 2011, p2). This I agree with in essence that activism doesn't not spring from its tools but rather activists use tools to spread their ideas. This however does not mean the tool was not vital in the act.

The final nail in this particular argument for me was when he stated 'by emphasising the liberating role of tools and downplaying the role of human agency, such accounts make Americans feel proud of their own contribution to events in the Middle East...Silicon Valley deserves a lion's share of the credit'. His ideas are truly interesting, but the fact he is so extreme in his view, makes it hard, for me at least, to take his argument criticising it heavily. After 2 pages of a well argues point, he suddenly falls into a 'screw you America' mentality. That isn't to say however that his points do not have their own merit.



Morozov, Evgeny 2011, 'Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go', 7 March, The Guardian, accessed 8/10/2011.